When social robots are imported from Asia to Europe they bring along with them a cultural luggage consisting of foreign sociotechnical imaginary. The effort to adopt the robot Silbot to Nordic social services exposed unfamiliar and cultural-dependent views of care, cognition, health and human nature.

Studying Silbot in “the wild” highlighted these issues as well as the human-robot interaction and the adaptation of the robot to real life praxis. The importance of comprehending robots as parts of sociotechnical ensembles is emphasized as well as the observance of how robots are shaped by the cultural context in the recipient countries.